Some very clever people have put up with a very silly system for far too long. That is the upshot of our reporting on scholarly journals this week. Academics not only provide the raw material, but also do the graft of the editing. What's more, they typically do so without extra pay or even recognition – thanks to blind peer review. The publishers then bill the universities, to the tune of 10% of their block grants, for the privilege of accessing the fruits of their researchers' toil. The individual academic is denied any hope of reaching an audience beyond university walls, and can even be barred from looking over their own published paper if their university does not stump up for the particular subscription in question.
This extraordinary racket is, at root, about the bewitching power of high-brow brands. Journals that published great research in the past are assumed to publish it still, and – to an extent – this expectation fulfils itself. To climb the career ladder academics must get into big-name publications, where their work will get cited more and be deemed to have more value in the philistine research evaluations which determine the flow of public funds. Thus they keep submitting to these pricey but mightily glorified magazines, and the system rolls on.
It might be dismissed as tale of other-worldly boffins, relayed with a quip about how many professors it takes to do a publication deal that doesn't rip them off. The appeal of academic life is, after all, that it runs to different rhythms from a ruthlessly efficient business. Universities are blessed with cross-subsidies that enable meandering inquiries to take their serendipitous course. More specifically, pricey journals provide scholarly societies with a precious revenue stream and help publishers fund otherwise-inviable monographs.
The very reason to worry, however, is that the commodity involved – namely knowledge – is not an ordinary one. In the arid language of modern economics, information is "non-rival", which is to say that one person can have more without another having less – so there ought to be no need for anyone to be locked out by subscriptions. The point is more forcibly made by quoting an economist of earlier age who warned of the folly of "shutting off the sun and the stars because they do not pay a dividend", because what is at stake here is the reach of the light of learning. The rationing of reading is always objectionable, but the consequences are suddenly graver because of text-mining technologies. These look across studies to uncover truths invisible to the human eye – truths which might sometimes save lives – and yet papers that languish behind pay walls are not available to be crunched in this way.
So the old order needs to change, not just for the good of academics, but for the good of the public who pay them. Copy-editing and admin will still need to be funded, but this can be done through direct grants for a fraction of the cost of subscriptions. The Wellcome Trust's moves to establish an open-access journal is one useful step; another is its suggestion that a record of getting material out into the public domain will in future be a factor in assessing grant applications. The universities minister, David Willetts, who developed a personal interest in more open access after running into endless pay walls while attempting to track down scholarly sources for his recent book, has set up a review which could push things forward, although it is important that the publishers sitting on this are not allowed to stymie its thrust. Research assessment "impact" criteria should be overhauled so they look at not just citations, but readership – as gauged by number of successful downloads.
In the end, however, if all else fails, it will fall to the scholars who imbue costly journals with their esteem in the first place to withdraw it, by transferring their patronage to properly refereed open access journals instead. A contributors' boycott is gathering strength and it will surely force change, if nothing else does. After all, it is the academics who do the researching, the writing and the reviewing – so they really can call the whole thing off.
• This article was amended on 12 April 2012. The word "not" was missing from the recommendation that research assessment "impact" criteria be overhauled so they look at not just citations, but readership. This has now been corrected